Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_03 (3 page)

So even as she took a breath to say no, Betsy changed her mind.

But then in the second it took to change gears and say yes, Betsy had another thought.

“I'd like to see the tapestry, see what materials are required, and how much,” she said, because “not badly damaged” could mean anything. “Would that be possible?”

“Oh, of course. It wouldn't be fair to ask for a donation of material without an understanding of how much and what kind. Mrs. Fairland has told me that she would be glad to come in at the same time and explain to you what is needed. I understand there is a group of needleworkers who meet at your shop, the, er, Monday Bunch? Mrs. Fairland is going to ask for volunteers from that group to do the work. I'm very pleased she has taken on this added responsibility, as I have no knowledge whatever about the needle arts. Shall I ask her to phone you? Or would you rather contact her yourself?”

“I'll call her, I have her number.”

“I want you to know that we appreciate your agreeing to do this, especially since you are not a member of Trinity.”

Was there a hint of rebuke in his voice? After all, Betsy had been raised in the Episcopal Church, and her sister had been an important member of Trinity. But perhaps she was being too sensitive. What she said was, “That's all right, it's my pleasure to be of service.” Because it was. She enjoyed being generous—when she could afford it. And in this case she might actually injure herself by saying no and thus giving free advertising to a rival needlework shop.

Betsy worked some more on the ad, called the weekly newspaper and was shocked by their rates, but agreed a salesman might call, then made herself a cup of raspberry tea and dialed Patricia's number.

Patricia wasn't available this coming Wednesday, which, Hollytree notwithstanding, Betsy was taking off. Christmas was on the horizon, and Betsy had shopping to do. Funny how the less money she had, the longer it took to find gifts. After going through the calendar and failing to find any mutually agreeable time and day between Wednesday and mid-January, Betsy said despairingly, “I don't suppose you're free this evening?” And to her surprise, Patricia was.

I
t was dark when Betsy set off for Trinity at quarter to six, and cold. In San Diego—no, Betsy wasn't going to think about that. She lived in Minnesota now, and she liked it, really she did. If not the climate, then the people. They had taken her to their hearts when she'd come here all dispirited and unhappy, and supported her through the even worse time after her sister had been murdered. And they had encouraged her to keep her sister's needlework shop open, which introduced her to a subculture she'd barely realized existed. There were people, mostly women, who would rather do needlework than eat.

Betsy halted in the middle of the sidewalk. She could remember when she'd liked embroidery. And she could remember a time when she thought people who did lots of needlepoint or counted cross stitch were obsessed, possibly a little crazy. But now she thought about how, when she was really lost in the sweet rhythm of basket weave, she, too, was on the verge of loosing little knots that daily life tied in the back of her neck.

She started walking again, smiling at herself, until she came to Water Street. The foot of Water Street was open to Lake Minnetonka, and the north wind had a long, uninterrupted start down the length of the lake. She quickly turned her back to its bitter bite and went up Water, past the Waterfront Café and the movie theater, the bookstore, the pet store, and the imported gift shop, crossed and turned right, up the hill to the church.

Patricia met Betsy at the glassed arcade between the tiny stone church, the first church built in Excelsior, and the large building that was so modern it didn't look like a church at all. Standing next to Patricia was Martha Winters, another member of the Monday Bunch. Martha was a short woman with snow-white hair and a round, pleasant face that made her look like Mrs. Claus, an effect emphasized by the fur trim on her wine-colored coat and hat. She was an expert counted cross stitcher but did just about every kind of needlework. Though well into her seventies, Martha had an alert and vigorous manner. She still worked part time in the dry cleaners she owned with her grandson.

“Jill Cross says she will try to drop by for a while before she goes on duty,” said Patricia. “Phil Galvin couldn't make it.”

“All right.” Phil was a regular customer, but Jill was Betsy's good friend. She was a police officer with a quiet manner that belied her strength of character—and she did exquisite needlepoint.

Patricia bent and unlocked the heavy glass door and led them into the arcade. To their left was a large room in front of the big, new church, made fragrant by a tall Christmas tree that had half a dozen paper ornaments on it. Betsy inhaled rapturously. Another reason to be glad to live in the north: Christmas trees were less of an artifice here. In this part of the world, the message they had brought Betsy's pagan ancestors—that the world in winter had not died—still had meaning.

On one wall of the hall was a row of black-framed photographs of bygone rectors. The last one had a broad, sweet face and a big nose, with white hair and intense eyes under shaggy eyebrows. His smile was sizzling enough to provoke an answering one in Betsy. On the picture frame was a little metal plate that said he was the Reverend Keane Abrams, and giving the years of the pastorship, which only amounted to seven.
I wonder what he was like as a person,
thought Betsy.

Patricia and Martha paused at the head of a stairwell to wait for Betsy. She came out of her musings and hurried after them, following them down into darkness. At the bottom of the stairs, Martha and Betsy stopped.

Patricia's footsteps went ahead, paused, and lights went on in a room off a narrow hall. Betsy and Martha walked into a severely plain and obviously elderly room with a high ceiling and a magnificent fireplace at its far end. Because the church complex overlapped the hill it was set on, the left wall had windows and there was a door at the far end leading outside.

But Betsy's eyes were quickly drawn to the only furniture in the room, a card table near a wall with a large piece of light-colored needlework draped over it.

She approached and saw, on a neutral background, a near life-size figure of Christ as the Good Shepherd, the design flat and stylized. Christ, deeply tanned and sporting long black hair and a curly beard, wore a white robe under a dark-orange mantle. A lamb rested complacently on his right forearm, and he held a crook in his left hand. Around his head was a halo of two bold lines of metallic gold, with a blue gray stripe between them. Six sheep crowded around him, their expressions benign.

The work was done in plain diagonal stitching. Martha stepped forward and laid bold hands on it, even turning a corner of it over.

“Basket weave,” she said, meaning the stitching. “And whew, is it mildewed!”

“Smells awful,” agreed Betsy, wrinkling her nose. “Is that moth damage?” she asked, gesturing at a spot where the stitches were missing, exposing the heavy canvas. “I mean moth larvae, don't I? It's not the moths, it's the grubs, right?”

“That's right,” said Patricia, and she sneezed. “Eggscuse be,” she said, and held a handkerchief to her nose.

There weren't a lot of bare places, and most were smaller than the palm of her hand. Betsy smiled. She could supply the wool to mend this with very little strain. But, “What about the mildew? No one can work on it like this. Is there a treatment we can use?”

“Sunlight is good,” said Martha—surprisingly, because she owned a dry cleaning shop. “But also you can mix one or two tablespoons of sodium perborate in a pint of water and sponge it on the mildew. That will get rid of the mildew stains, too, and it's a mild enough bleach that it shouldn't hurt the colors. I'll see about treating it before we start work.”

“Thanks,” said Patricia.

There were footsteps, and the women turned to see a tall woman in a police uniform coming toward them, taking off her hat as she approached. Her jacket was thick, her utility belt weighty, and her gun large. Above all that was a lovely Gibson girl face surrounded by ash-blond hair, pulled back into a short braid.

“Hello, Jill,” said Patricia. “Glad you could come.”

“I can't stay long.” Jill came up to the table. “I've been meaning to call you, Betsy. Anything you want me to bring to the party tomorrow?”

Betsy was giving a Christmas party to thank her friends and employees for their loyalty. Both Patricia and Martha were coming, so it was all right for Jill to talk about it.

“No, I have everything I need, thanks.”

Jill leaned closer than Betsy had dared to examine the tapestry. “This doesn't look so bad,” she said. “That ground color should be easy to match. Who's working on it?”

“So far, just me, Martha, and Phil Galvin,” said Patricia.

“I'm too busy with the shop,” Betsy said, feeling a slight blush warm her cheeks at this need to justify herself. “But I'll supply the wool, the needles, Febreze, anything you need.”

“That's generous of you,” Jill said, frowning at the bottom left corner, where a strand of tan yarn hung down. “Are you in charge, Patricia?”

“Yes, I told Father John we could do this at no cost to the church. But Betsy, I didn't tell him to ask you to donate the materials. I'm sure we could raise the money to pay you.”

“Oh, that's all right. It won't break me to donate a few yards of tan wool. How old is this tapestry?” The style of the design made Betsy think of the 1950s or early '60s.

Patricia said, “Ten or twelve years. But it has never been displayed that I know of. Lucy Abrams designed it and worked on it with other members of Trinity. I called her daughter, and when I described it, she said she remembered her mother and some other women working on it shortly before she died. She said she thought it was lost, thrown away.” Patricia explained to Betsy, “Father Keane Abrams was Father John's predecessor, and one of the best-loved rectors we've ever had. Lucy was his wife.”

“What a character he was!” said Martha. “A diamond in the rough, certainly, but a twenty-carat diamond, at least. His sermons were down to earth, addressed to the common man, which made us refined types sit up and take notice. Pithy, that's how we described his sermons.”

Jill said, “My father liked him. But my mother thought he was probably a reformed burglar who should be a chaplain down at the jail.”

Patricia, laughing, said, “The first time he stepped into the pulpit, I thought,
O Lord, what have we got here?
He looked like a longshoreman or a retired boxer. But in five minutes, I was thinking how wonderful he—” She broke off, blinking.

“What?” asked Betsy.

Patricia continued, “He wasn't here long, and retired from Trinity all of a sudden, saying he hadn't felt well for awhile, and he had a massive stroke a week later at home. His wife Lucy found him and apparently tried to help him up off the floor and had a heart attack. She was found dead beside him by their daughter Mandy. It was dreadful, just dreadful. Mandy went to live with an aunt, and Father Keane has been in a nursing home ever since. Can't talk, can't walk, can't feed himself.” Real tears glittered on her eyelashes.

“It was awful for her to come home to that, just awful,” agreed Martha. “So sad.”

Patricia said, “Father John agrees that if we restore this tapestry and persuade the rest of the vestry, he will not object to it hanging in the officially renamed Reverend Keane Abrams Library.”

There was a gleam in the woman's eyes that shone through the tears. Betsy exchanged a smile with Jill and Martha, who actually winked. They all knew Patricia. Even if Father John objected, the deed was all but done.

When Betsy walked out of the church hall after the meeting, snow was coming down again, blowing sideways in a stiff wind. It stung her cheeks, flapped the skirt of her long coat around her legs, and made her walk crabwise. She staggered down to the corner of Second and Water, where it blew even harder. Her hat lifted itself, and she barely grabbed it before it went sailing out into the street. She'd seen snowstorms like this on television, after an afternoon at the beach. She unwrapped her scarf from her neck and tied it over her head.

It was a struggle, those few blocks down Water, then a lesser one up Lake to her shop and home. Once safely inside, climbing the stairs to her apartment, she was suddenly overcome with a feeling of elation, as if she'd climbed a mountain. She remembered blizzards in her youth in Milwaukee, and she found it even more exciting now in her maturity to discover they still couldn't over-match her.

 

The snow stopped by bedtime, and plows must have worked all night, because by Saturday morning the streets were clear. Snow was piled along the curbs, in mountain ranges so high that from inside the shop, Betsy could see only the roofs of cars as they went by. She cleared the sidewalk yet again, adding her own peaks to the Himalayas. Then she cut a narrow passage through to the street so customers wouldn't need ropes and pitons to get to her shop.

A few minutes later, a shadow passed the front window. Betsy looked to see a woman in a wine-colored, fur-trimmed coat holding her gloved hand to her face—the wind was cutting sharply this morning. She ducked into the slightly recessed door of the shop, the hand came down, and it was Martha Winters.

“Hello, Betsy, Godwin,” she said as she entered. “I've come to pick up that bellpull. Is it back yet?”

“I believe so,” said Betsy. “The finisher brought a whole box of things in just before closing yesterday.”